Renegades (Renegades #1)
By: Marissa Meyer
My Rating: Three out of five stars
Best For: 14 and up

A book about superheroes? Yes!

Is the book super? Not really, but it’s okay.

It’s total YA, so start plugging in all the necessities. The parents are dead, protagonist is an outsider, the adults are useless, token diversity (times a billion), government stinks and needs to be overthrown, forced romance, girl doesn’t know she’s beautiful, etc.

At least there’s no love triangle.

But, hey. YA works, so this works too. Even if it is occasionally cliche, obnoxious, and ignores things like common sense and the laws of physics.

Too much? I didn’t actually dislike it THAT much…

It was definitely a fun story. Because…superheros!

Think X-Men, but the mutants are called prodigies. A bad guy prodigy spy poses as a good guy prodigy, infiltrates their HQ, becomes friends with the good guy prodigies, and ends up saving the day by helping the good guy prodigies defeat the bad guy prodigies. Are the bad guys really all bad? Are the good guys really all good? Is there a way for us to all just be friends?

Such deep questions.

The book was fun because of the creative use of a whole bunch of random superpowers. I was frustrated that the characters motivations didn’t make sense and they made one bad decision after another.

No sex, no language. A bit of violence. Some parents may want to know one of the main characters has two dads, and we’re reminded about it A LOT. (See above comment on token diversity).

If you’re looking for mindless YA fun and you don’t care about details like reality and good decision making, then you’ll probably enjoy Renegades!

It’s kind of long at nearly 600 pages, so I’ll say best for 14 and up.

Happy Reading!